Industry News

Kingfisher closing around 60 B&Q stores

Kingfisher PLC has announced it will be closing 60 out of 360 outlets B&Q stores in the UK and Ireland, in the next two years.

The move came at the same time that Kingfisher announced a 15.2% fall in pre-tax profit for 2014.

Véronique Laury, Chief Executive Officer, said:

“Home improvement is a great market with huge potential and Kingfisher has a strong position within it with further scope to grow in a sustainable way. However, it is clear to me that we need to organise ourselves very differently to unlock our potential. This will involve taking what is essentially a locally managed set of businesses and creating instead a single, unified company where customer needs come first. The first step in developing this new organisation is the creation of a new, international leadership team with more focused cross-company roles.

“We have a lot to do and we are announcing today a set of first ‘sharp’ decisions which are already underway including the closure of around 15% surplus B&Q space (c.60 stores) and our few loss making stores in Europe, the development of unified garden and bathroom businesses and the start of a Big Box revitalisation programme across Europe.

“In addition, we will be developing our detailed plans for the wider reorganisation of the company as we progress on this exciting journey towards becoming ‘ONE’ Kingfisher.”

Is this good news for the industry? Tweet us @installermag or comment below.